Mary Oliver published her first poetry collection, Voyage, and Other Poems, in 1963. Since then, she’s published more than 20 books of prose and poetry. She’s won several awards including a 1984 Pulitzer Prize for American Primitive, and more recently the National Book Award for New and Selected Poems, in 1992. She’s earned praise from many. Her poems, renowned for their poignant illustration of the natural world, are lovely and evocative. They entreat you to attend to nature and ponder the deeper, broader implications they bring closer to focus.

With the same adeptness, she turned her skill to writing a handbook for the genre she’d commanded for more than thirty years at the time of it’s publication.

You can’t Teach Someone to be a Poet, Can You?

No, but you can teach the skills, and impart some understanding. I consider it poetry theory, like music theory. Learning these can free you from mundane, trite expressions and empower you to make calculated leaps bolstered by understanding.

Contents

INTRODUCTION
GETTING READY
READING POEMS
IMITATION
SOUND
MORE DEVICES OF SOUND
THE LINE
SOME GIVEN FORMS
VERSE THAT IS FREE
DICTION, TONE, VOICE
IMAGERY
REVISION
WORKSHOPS AND SOLITUDE
CONCLUSION

Permissions Acknowledgments
Index

In the introduction, Mary Oliver stated that she hoped to have her book be a good beginning. She accomplished this and something more, impeccably. A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry is a book “about the things that can be learned.” It’s an overview that touches key areas of poetry including tone, rhythm, meter, style, how to read poetry, imagery and much more. Take a look at the book contents listed above. We learn enough to become competent students of poetry, and to know what more to ask. Further, she points us in the direction of particular poets to read for examples of writing styles.

Why it’s Important to Study

Mary Oliver is a world class, Pulitzer prize winning poet. Her understanding of the craft is transmitted clearly in her prose. So, is it any wonder, her poetry handbooks are used in classrooms; at least, it is at the University of Houston. She presents details on the forms of poetry in clear prose, and brings home her points with examples of poems from poets, well-known and not-so-well-known.

On pages 2-3 of the Introduction, Oliver explains part of the importance of studying the craft of poetry. She likens it to learning the skills of any artisan discipline, like painters and musicians. Of writing without studying, she says:

“…the student falls into a manner of writing, which is not a style but only a chance thing, vaguely felt and not understood, or even, probably intended…After four or five poems, he or she is already in a rut, having developed a way of writing without ever having the organized opportunity to investigate and try other styles and techniques.”

Oliver goes further to predict that there may come a time when the writer’s work will require something new, a precise skill with manipulating their verses. In this situation the writer get’s stuck and doesn’t know how to revise his work, “…the poem fails, and the writer is frustrated.”

What can You Learn about Poetry?

Oliver’s handbook is full of the lovely language she is known for. Her assessments are evocative, stimulating, inciting my own desire to write better. On page 72, she talks about free verse using William Carlos Williams and his poem The Red Wheelbarrow. “This eight-line poem has passed through endless scrutiny, and still it refuses to give up all its secrets. But it does tell us a great deal.” At more than one point, I found myself thinking, “I want to be able to do that.”

This poetry handbook contains gems that illuminate Oliver’s points. The something more that I got from this handbook was a pleasant surprise: I experienced renewed appreciation for the art. Not something I would have expected from a How-to book.

The chapter Diction, Tone, Voice is full of clear explanations of the contemporary poem. Oliver tells us that tone is to be created deliberately, just as is the choice of words used. She includes one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton, and her poem, i’m accused of tending to the past… Also included is Workday by a poet I don’t know, named Linda Hogan.

In the chapter on Revision, we are told that in order to adequately revise your own work, you need to sever your ties to the words written. This is the same in other writing as well. The reason to separate is so that you can see that useless parts for what they are and delete them.

From the outset, Mary Oliver’s appreciation for training and form are clear. She shares with us that it’s important to be deliberate in your actions, to have control over every aspect of your poem. However, Oliver adds, if we must choose between formal training and reading, reading is the better choice. Nearing the end of the book, she touches on workshops again, stating that they can provide writers with tools, advice and feedback.

It’s important to understand that the writing from writing class is often mechanical, not-quite-art stuff, expectedly so. Still, writing from class, imitating, is a viable learning too. And follows this with what I consider to be a gem of an insight into workshops. It’s something I didn’t consider, and was not in a workshop setting long enough to have experienced this. And yet it made perfect sense as soon as I read it. She tells us:

“The risk of the workshop is that it is necessarily composed of a group of persons and it therefore cannot avoid certain patterns of social behavior.”

She explains that the danger inherent in this setting is that if you’re not careful, you may find yourself writing and presenting to group, work that will get you accepted and applauded–work not truly expressive of your ability.

The conclusion of the chapter, The Line, is toward the middle of the book. This was another opportunity for me to be riveted by her turn of phrase. Mary Oliver brings home the importance of variation in line formation. Without variations poems can lose your attention. She says, “The gift of words–their acute and utter wakefulness–is drowned in a rhythm that is too regular, and the poem becomes, instead of musical, a dull and forgettable muttering.”

Conclusion

Mary Oliver’s book is a great guide that will stick with me, and be kept close at hand. Her Permissions Acknowledgments area is a goldmine of poets to explore. And finally, her Index makes this short handbook a really convenient reference tool. A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry should be on the shelves of high school and college students, adults and eighth graders alike. Really, it’s for anyone inclined to get a real feel for the magic that is involved in the craft and the art of poetry.

It’s quite possible this book will stand the test of time, like Becoming a Writer, by Dorothea Brande. It was published in 1934. Or, The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. Pulling from Wikipedia, this book was first published in 1919, revised in 1935 and again, by E. B. White for publication in 1959.

The reason I chose this book is because I have enjoyed Mary Oliver’s poetry for quite a while now. I wanted to get more insight into the theory of poetry and writing and reading poems. And, when a friend told me that he read her one of her prose books in his poetry class, it seemed like a good choice, and it was!

If you should read the book, please come back and share your thoughts in a comment. Or send me an email.

Related entries:

• The Poetry Home Repair Manual
• Reading and Responding to Poetry
• Wikipedia entry for The Elements of Style

Writing poetry is serious work. And the best thing you can do to learn to write poetry, is to write poetry. Other things that you can do to learn include reading poetry, as well as reading about writing poetry. And this book about writing poetry, gave me many insights.

Dispelling Myths

If it doesn’t come out whole, it can’t be any good. For a long time I thought that a poem had to come out whole or it was just wrong. It was many years before I could accept that it was alright for them to come out needing work. Since that realization, I’ve read countless views on writing poems, including one or two from writers who held that only good poems came out whole. Still, many more have not only extolled the virtues of reworking their poetry, but they also advocate revising for other writers as well.

That’s one of the myths dispelled in The Poetry Home Repair Manual: Practical Advice for Beginning Poets, ©2005. It’s written by Ted Kooser, United States Poet Laureate 2004-2006.

One thing I work at is picking the words that will transmit my experience, my reason for writing the words. To translate events felt into words that convey my response to them is my mission when I’m working up a poem. According to Kooser,

Though it can be a lovely experience to write a poem that pleases and delights its author, to write something that touches a reader is just about as good as it gets.

(Bold added for emphasis by me.)

You don’t have to be a genius to write poetry. Another myth is that all poets are Mensa scholars. I thought for a while that if I didn’t know enough stuff, I would never be able to write poetry that people would be able to relate to or understand. Kooser says many of the poets he shares are of average intelligence. What they do have in common is a love of words, “they love playing with language.”

Not knowing all the rules of poetry isn’t a reason to stop. In twelve chapters and less than 200 pages, Ted Kooser guides writers through a poetry writing process that is relaxed. It makes the work of writing poetry relaxed and simple. He says that you don’t need to stress about the rules, but understand that it can be an entertaining challenge to work inside the limits of fixed forms.

Explaining How Things Work

In poetry, less is more. There’s a really good explanation of why your poems don’t need to be stuffed with adverbs. When you create poems, you’re giving readers enough information so that you engage their knowledge base and experiences. In a way, your reader actually completes your poem.

Look for the details around these tips:

• A poem’s structure is important. But, you don’t want the structure to overpower the content.
• When you write poems, you can breathe life into them by writing from life.
• Use of metaphor can do a lot for a poem; whereas, overdoing metaphor use can kill a poem.
• “…think of writing your poem as a means of persuasion…”

And, there are many more great tips, descriptions, explanations and examples you’ll read in this book. There are insights, poems samples, poets you can explore further, and ideas for exercises.

The poems Ted Kooser includes in The Poetry Home Repair Manual serve as great examples of the points he makes. He includes the works of other poets, including Henry James, Mary Oliver, and Robert Frost. He even wrote poems expressly for the book. There are inspiring quotes and excerpts from poets and their works. The end result is a great guide that you will return to again and again, like I do.

I first read this book a few years ago, and have picked it up a few times since then. So, I thought I’d share this very useful book in hopes that it helps other aspiring writers of poems. If you find it useful, please drop me a note. And if you have any suggestions that you want to share, let me know that too.

It’s been a couple of years since I reviewed this book and I’m still just as excited about it today. It revealed to me a spirit-infusing practice that I continue to use as I prepare to take part in my days.

Dr. Jones introduces us to his practice for greeting the day. In his devotional time he calms his spirit by making still the concerns of the day. By emptying himself of lists and obligations, everything that threatens to distract him. He encourages us to do this important first step, respecting that it is sometimes uncomfortable to face new aspects of ourselves and quite necessary.

Attempt to persevere by riding through the place of initial dis-ease. Breakthrough growth often begins in the tension of the familiar rubbing up against the unfamiliar.

Dr. Jones recognizes the challenge of being your best self and the effort required to optimize your mental and emotional state. The grace that allows him to be his best is from being open to God. And an equally important part of this process is the respect that must be given to Self.

The B.R.E.W. self-embrace moment is a good time to listen to the dreams and desires bubbling up inside you. Thank God for writers like John Eldridge and Erwin Raphael McManus, who have rescued the sacred meaning and value of words and realities like desire and passion. Use B.R.E.W. self-embrace to nurture your God-given desires and passion.

B.R.E.W. is a book about self-awareness and appreciation. It helps us to release the power that is inherent in us as Christians, power that God graced us with before we knew who He was. This is power that we were meant to use to prepare us for the adventure that comes on the wings of each new day.

Pay attention and drink with great freedom and joy from those wells that inspire you most.

B.R.E.W. is the map for the devotional practice.

Be still
Receive God’s Love
Embrace Personhood
Welcome the Day

I use this devotional practice regularly to bring out my best self. My statement to the day is: This is the day that the Lord has made; I will rejoice and take part in it.

And for those situations that are especially straining, this is a great meditation on the fly. I am able to return to my center, restore my calmness, to again be focused.

My final words come from the beginning of the book. Dr. Jones offers this guiding request to set the tone for reading Morning B.R.E.W.:

When you think of Morning B.R.E.W., I don’t what you to think first of a book authored by Kirk Byron Jones. I want you to think of your own daily deepening, energizing, and transformative experience. In this sense—and I believe this with all my heart—B.R.E.W. is less my book; B.R.E.W. is more your experience.